Osteoblasts are differentiated from stem cells of various origins. It is known that various factors are involved in the differentiation of osteoblasts, and in particular, mechanical stress is known to be an important mechanism for osteoblast differentiation. In recent years, considerable efforts have been put into differentiating osteoblast using stem cell differentiation-induction technology under in vitro culture conditions and enhancing the function of bone tissue or treating damage using the same. Accordingly, the technical development is actively being made to induce the differentiation of osteoblasts using stem cells and to utilize the same as a therapeutic agent.
In particular, unlike physiological bone remodeling, bone regeneration under pathological condition such as trauma or the insertion of a prosthesis is accompanied by inflammation. There is currently a method of coating the surface of substances or randomly applying a change to induce bone formation in a dental implant, an orthopedic hip and knee joint, and a trauma fixation device. However, this method is a very limited approach to induce effective bone formation, and in particular, attempts to inhibit osteoblast formation in an inflammatory environment have rarely been made. Accordingly, in the traumatic or inflammatory environment, the effective differentiation induction technology of osteoblasts is very important for the shortening of the treatment period of a patient and the recovery thereof, and can dramatically improve the quality of life of the patient. To this end, currently, osteogenesis inducing factors (osteogenic factors) such as bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP-4) have been used, but there is a disadvantage in that they are costly and they have not been studied for improving osteoblasts under inflammatory conditions.
Accordingly, there is a need to study a culture scaffold for effectively differentiating precursor cells of osteoblasts into osteoblasts. In particular, there is a growing need for a culture scaffold capable of effectively inducing osteoblast differentiation even in a traumatic or inflammatory environment.
In this regard, the present inventors have confirmed that, even under conditions in which an inflammatory factor is present or in limited osteogenic factors, precursor cells of various origins can be effectively differentiated into osteoblasts by a culture scaffold composed of the optimized patterns according to the type of precursor cells of osteoblasts, and completed the present disclosure.